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Friday

Our DC trip ... three weeks later

Needing a much-needed getaway, Ani and I headed down the DC to visit Mike and Rachel, and to see the sites. Wednesday night we couldn't fall asleep, we were both watching Conan. This does not bode well for waking up early to beat traffic.

At six I wake up, I go in and take a quick shower. And wake up Ani. "Go back to bed it's early" she mumbles. After a little coaxing, she wakes up and showers. We go to the bank, get some cash, hit the gas station, and car wash and we are on our way. Ani wanted a McGriddle so we stopped at a McD's right over the Williamsburg Bridge. They messed up our order. No McGriddle for Ani and a stale bagel for me. We got out of the city pretty incident free. And onto the turnpike.

It was a beautiful day. Ani and I were listening to our audio book of conversational French (in anticipation of our Montreal trip). We got over the Delaware memorial bridge with no incident. Maybe I'm getting used to it. And onward towards DC.

We get into DC, and parked right near Camp Casey on the mall. We were literally 500-1000 feet away form the Washington Monument. We put some quarters in the meter and went on our way. We checked out Camp Casey with its tiny white crosses and boots, representing the dead it was quite chilling.

After climbing up the hill to the Washington Monument, we find out that we need tickets to go up. So Ani waited on line and I ran down to get tickets. The next available showing was at 230. We decided to check out other things, and perhaps come back.

We visited the WW2, Korean War and Vietnam War memorials. Very chilling all of them. It is weird that the touristiest part of town, is basically a cemetery. The Korean War one is really cool with these life-sized statues of soldiers in ponchos ... none of which look like Jaime Farr.

We saw Lincoln next. Wow. There really is no more breathtaking thing in DC, than Lincoln. Even though it is much smaller than Washington, there is something much less ostentatious about it. Afterwards we went to the National something of Science, were we saw the giant sitting Einstein. He is really cool, and hopefully if I have an office one day, and I'm still doing Baby E books, I will find a small version of that statue for me desk area.

We put in a few more quarters in the meter and walked over to the White House. There were mobs of rude French tourists. We later found out that we were looking at the back of the WH. I saw no snipers ... that saddened me. After a brief yelling at by a security guard, we were on the road towards our hotel in Woodbridge.

We stayed in the same hotel, we stayed in for Mike and Rachel's wedding. It's a nice place, for a good price - The Sleep Inn Woodbridge (not a sponsored ad ... but if the Sleep Inn wants to be a regular sponsor of Niel's Inner Web please contact us). The room we had was this bizarre handicap room, with a loud buzzer and huge bathroom, with a separate light in the shower. Sweet ... and sexy.

After picking up some essentials we forgot. We met up with Mike and Rachel for some Thai food, and then some frozen custard. That was tasty. We visited their new place, which is really nice. Lots of light switches, which is always a good thing. The four of us saw The Longest Yard, it was good. Now with it being late, and Ani and I having had along day, we retired back at The Sleep Inn.

After breakfast, the four of us did some apple picking. Actually a lot more, apple eating, throwing and picture taking, but some picking was involved. Then ...

We went to the Shenandoah mountains

Rachel became frightened of the flash and then real lightning

We saw a bunch of deer

We were all glad we were shoot digitally not with film

We had a picnic ... soggy sandwiches can still be good

There was some allegations of me hitting Ani

We got back to Rachel's parents house, were I was parked and we bid the so-called "Squilkys" adieu. Ani and I cleaned up a little at the hotel and took a walk around the Mall and got dinner at Red Robins. They have free refills on their speckled lemonade ... I think I over did it with five refills.

We called it a night. The next morning we headed into DC to see the Smithsonian. We found parking kind of far from the Mall, but it was near a metro station, which was good since we wanted to take a metro. Ani said it looked like a train station she had seen in a nightmare.

When we got off at the Smithsonian station, we saw signs National Book Festival This way and signs with arrows the other way saying March this way . So basically they had a book festival on one side of the Washington monument and a protest on the other. It was really neat. There were tons of people, with signs ... and books.

What We Learned

Book lovers and protestors similar crowd

Cspan2 bags much easier to get at this than at BEA

I have no idea how much the metro costs

We parked in the ghetto ... or so we thought

Lots of jogging in DC

The Armenian alphabet is actually an adaptation from an Ethiopian alphabet ... which further proves my Lando Calrissian theory

After getting back to the car. We got lost leaving the city (and found the real ghetto) and eventually we got back to 95. We went straight to the concert which I will talk about at another time.